April 5, 2015
Easter Sunday
Rev. Amy Welin: We have known for weeks that spring has been coming, not because the weather has cooperated, but because the peeps and chocolate candy and butterfly toys have arrived in the stores. We have had to trust in the coming of spring, without a lot of observable evidence.
Sometimes we realize that the boundary between the dead of winter and the new life of spring is very thin.
The phone call came late on a March night. There had been a terrible car accident. Although her car was crushed after skidding on black ice on the highway, Elizabeth was alive, pulled out of the wreck after the fire department cut through the roof. I was sitting in her hospital room two days later when one of the first responders came to see her. He told her that he had seen many wrecks, and that her survival was miraculous. He had to come to see her to believe it. He gently shook Elizabeth’s hand. The room was very quiet after he left, until Elizabeth said Well, this sheds a whole new light on Easter this year, doesn’t it?
We come to church on Easter to celebrate a profound mystery: Jesus of Nazareth was dead, and then he was alive again. And while it is good news, it is shocking and difficult to believe, even for people who want to be Christian, because it goes against everything we can observe.
In the Gospel of Mark, the first Easter was the day of resurrection, and it was shocking. An angel told the grieving women who wanted to anoint his body that Jesus would meet them in Galilee. They knew that Jesus had died, and they knew he was buried, and yet his body was no longer in the tomb where it had been laid. It is not surprising that the women were terrified and ran away.
The appearances of Jesus in Galilee are transformative. It is only after his friends see Jesus in his risen state – his body so transformed that initially they did not recognize him – that the things that he had said while preaching in Galilee made sense. They believed because they saw Jesus. Jesus, the man from Nazareth, was the Christ, the Messiah, and he was alive. He stood among them, he ate with them, he touched them. There were many witnesses, beginning with Mary and then Peter, and then hundreds of others including Paul of Tarsus (see 1 Cor 15 and Acts of the Apostles). The appearances of Jesus led them from fear to certainty.
And all the apostles were martyred, defending the truth of the resurrection of Jesus.
As much as we may enjoy them, Easter is not all about the butterflies and candy eggs and peeps. All of those things are really lovely, and I will defend the right of children to eat candy with (or for) breakfast on Easter. But Easter has a deeper meaning for us.
The story of what happened to Jesus is heavenly. The cross is empty and so is the tomb.
The Easter story is about the shocking sweetness of God, coming among us and changing human destiny. When we know something about life and death and the way things usually unfold, the story of the resurrection of Jesus is inexplicable. And it is not too good to be true.
The reason I believe that the story of the resurrection of Jesus is true, as we can read it in the Bible, is that it is simply so impossible. The witnesses to the resurrection were so shocked and frightened that, once they were able to find words for it, they had to share the story of their experience. They knew, and you and I know, that this is not the way things happen at the cemetery.
They also knew that the man they had breakfast with, and heard speaking, and touched, was real.
Today’s story allows us to stand in the place of those who see something miraculous and who cannot explain it. We come with our faith and hope, and our questions and even our doubts. We may have to wrestle with our own disbelief that something so wonderful and amazing could have happened.
And unlike the peeps and chocolate bunnies, the story of Jesus lasts for ever, and changes our lives. Because if Jesus rose into new life, so will you and I, and so will our loved ones.
What stones of disbelief, unknowing, and fear need to be rolled away from the tombs of our own lives? What hinders us from believing the reality of Jesus’ resurrection? What keeps us from telling the world that Jesus is alive? There is nothing to be afraid of, not even death, because death has no lasting power over us.
The truth of Easter morning is that God will not leave us alone in our confusion and fear. The risen Lord always goes ahead of us, calling us to live in the fullness and possibility of God’s love, for us and for the whole world. So let us leave our empty tombs behind. Let us go forth heralding and participating in the new life of Jesus’ resurrection.
It is sweeter than the peeps, and more lasting.